Some peo­ple adopt cats, dogs, even snakes or fer­rets. I adopt a but­ter­fly.

It begins late after­noon, a gor­geous Indi­an Sum­mer day in Nor­man, Okla­homa. The sun gets in my eyes. As I turn to step down heav­i­ly from the curb, I glimpse a dis­con­cert­ing splotch of col­or: a liv­ing Monarch but­ter­fly, wings slow­ly flex­ing, sit­ting upon an oil stain.

Kind soul that I am, I bend to free it from the tar pit, but com­ing clos­er I rec­og­nize the degree of his plight. “Oh, no won­der.” A break in the lead­ing edge its left forewing leaves it shred­ding and use­less for flight. “He’s not going any­where.”

I want to move it to a safer place, away from crush­ing wheels or heels, but as I look around, I see no place suit­able to place him. He puts up lit­tle resis­tance as I care­ful­ly scoop him up onto my index fin­ger. I imag­ine he was hit by a car and flung by the force of wind to this very spot. Legs col­lapsed on his left side, both anten­nae gone, I’m think­ing, “this is one ******-up but­ter­fly!Con­tin­ue read­ing »

Falling some­where beyond the dual­ism of cred­u­lous accep­tance and rabid pseu­do-skep­ti­cism, there exist approach­es to cul­ture which have at their heart a recog­ni­tion of the indi­vid­ual as insep­a­ra­ble from nature – the nest­ed lev­els of nat­ur­al and socio-polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion with­in which the indi­vid­ual exists — from the nuclear fam­i­ly on up to the inter­de­pen­dent ecosys­tems of the bios­phere, and inclu­sive of as yet unac­knowl­edged inter­con­nec­tions with­in the uni­verse. The wis­dom of our ancients is return­ing to us full-cir­cle, man­i­fest­ing through new sci­ences, and new will­ing­ness to con­sid­er and uti­lize ancient method­olo­gies.Con­tin­ue read­ing »

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The Proverbial Tip Jar

I like my coffee dark brewed french pressed with more Sucanat than I ought to have and a nice thick layer of organic raw coconut butter floating on top. But the wife drinks a lot of Tazo chai... Thanks!

Falling some­where beyond the dual­ism of cred­u­lous accep­tance and rabid pseu­­do-skep­ti­­cism, there exist approach­es to cul­ture which have at their heart a recog­ni­tion of the indi­vid­ual as insep­a­ra­ble from nature – the nest­ed lev­els of nat­ur­al and socio-polit­i­­cal orga­ni­za­tion with­in which the indi­vid­ual exists — from the nuclear fam­i­ly on up to the inter­de­pen­dent ecosys­tems […]